\u201cSustainable Community Food Systems provides motivated undergraduates with hands-on experiences in the community around issues of food, sustainability, and social justice,\u201d says program co-founder and advisor Andrew Jolly-Ballantine, an associate professor-in-residence with UConn\u2019s Department of Geography. \u201cWe designed the SCFS minor with the intent of providing UConn students with the kind of deep learning experience that is usually seen in small, liberal arts co-op or thesis programs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now in its fourth year, the minor includes a core set of classes as well as a capstone thesis required of all participants, and the heart of SCFS is its dedicated team of faculty and mentors, including Phoebe Godfrey in Sociology; Kristina Wagstrom in Chemical Engineering; Jennifer Cushman in UConn Extension; and, until recently, Julia Cartibiano, former manager of Spring Valley Student Farm.<\/p>\n
But the heart of the SCFS curriculum is its internship \u2013 an intensive experience, 16 to 20 hours per week, with a single community partner that is involved in the food system.<\/p>\n
\u201cLearning by doing is essential for what we understand as authentic learning, while also engaging in extensive reflection and critical analysis so that students repeatedly engage in both theory and praxis,\u201d says Godfrey, an advisor and co-founder of the program.<\/p>\n
Some students work on farms, both urban and rural. Others partner with social justice organizations or help build and maintain community gardens. Some focus on developing business concepts that seek to fulfill unmet food needs in local communities. And still others work on environmental advocacy efforts to protect clean food and water sources.<\/p>\n
In all, Sustainable Community Food Systems participants complete a staggering 450 hours of paid and credit-bearing internship over the course of their involvement in the program.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach SCFS Fellow works on a farm or at a community garden throughout the growing season, while also working with a community partner on projects that range from sustainable farming practices to distribution of fresh produce to families in need to education of youth about farming, nutrition, and equity in food access within their communities,\u201d Jolly-Ballantine says, \u201cgiving them a much deeper experience that brings them closer to the community than the traditional internship.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s that experience, combined with a full offering of service learning courses, that facilitates the goals of Life-Transformative Education<\/a> in ways that are authentic and meaningful to the community as well as students and faculty, says Yakovich.<\/p>\n \u201cService Learning also enables the content of the program to transition easily to writing grants and conducting research as the partners, students, and faculty deem necessary and relevant as we move through time and space with the minor in lockstep with the needs of the community,\u201d she says, \u201cwhich translates to the needs of our own UConn community as well, because food and sustainability is for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n While SCFS is still relatively new at UConn, support for the program is growing \u2013 initial cohorts of three to six students are expected to expand to as many as 13 over the next few years, as student interest, funding, and faculty support from across the University continue to increase.<\/p>\n \u201cThe potential of the SCFS program for making change around Connecticut is huge,\u201d Jolly-Ballantine says. \u201cThis model of Life-Transformative Education touches the faculty and staff of the program, the undergraduates, and members of the community at all ages.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt is our hope that, as more students become aware of SCFS and see that it offers not only unique learning experiences, but that it also offers students the potential for meaningful careers, that will help to address our most pressing social and environmental problems \u2013 as in, how we will live and eat on this one planet together as one species among millions of others and do so equitably, peacefully and sustainably,\u201d says Godfrey. \u201cThese are issues that more and more students want to address and that we as a campus, as a society, and as a species must address together and now.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Breadmaker<\/strong><\/p>\n At any given time, Jessica Larkin-Wells \u201919 (CLAS) might have over 100 pounds of flour stored in her basement.<\/p>\n A lot of it comes from Maine Grains<\/a>, a producer focused on freshly milled, organic, and heritage grains sourced from the Northeast, and on many a Saturday night, late into the evening, you\u2019ll find Larkin-Wells and her boyfriend ferrying the doughs made with those flours to a pizza shop in Guilford that\u2019s just closed up for the weekend.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s becoming routine now,\u201d she says. \u201cOn Saturday night, we rake the coals in the oven to spread them evenly across the oven floor, and then close the door. Because it’s wood-fired, and because it’s a very well insulated oven, it maintains its heat the next day, so we don’t have to add any energy input, it’s just already hot and ready for bread.\u201d<\/p>\n Overnight, the 900-degree pizza oven will slowly begin to cool, and the temperature within will become more even. On Sunday morning, after sweeping out the burned-down embers and ash, the oven will be mopped with water \u2013 both to clean it and to further cool it down, Larkin-Wells explains \u2013 and then it\u2019s time for baking.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen it’s the right temperature, and when we’re ready to bake our bread, we load it all up, and try to fill it as tightly as possible,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause the more bread that\u2019s inside, the more steam will be trapped inside the oven.\u201d<\/p>\n That steam is important in building the crispy outer crust of well-baked bread, as well as forming the loaf\u2019s \u201cear\u201d \u2013 the ridge that opens up as the bread expands in the steamy heat of the oven.<\/p>\n \u201cI have high standards for what bread should look like,\u201d says Larkin-Wells, who prefers to bake naturally leavened bread, what\u2019s commonly known as sourdough. \u201cWild yeast is kind of hard to purchase, it’s not super available to people, so it feels really special that I can give it to people.\u201d<\/p>\n While Larkin-Wells lived and worked at Spring Valley Student Farm<\/a> as an undergraduate, she turned to bread \u2013 rather than farming \u2013 as her focus for the Sustainable Community Food Systems minor. The sociology major had been baking with her mother since she was little, she says, but UConn\u2019s program offered the opportunity to dive deeply into the history, art, and science of breadmaking.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it came out of family tradition, just the general way we do it in my family,\u201d she says of her interest in breadmaking. \u201cWe share food with people, and that\u2019s how we express our love and caring.\u201d<\/p>\n For her internship, Larkin-Wells worked at Atticus<\/a> \u2013 a New Haven institution \u2013 and learned the ins and outs of fermentation, mixing, proofing, and ultimately baking different types of bread. The bakers at Atticus, especially head baker Josh Kanter, were incredibly supportive of her, she says, taking her from zero knowledge to the skill she owns today.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, I can make bread that pretty much everybody loves,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I can make a really big loaf of bread for a group of people and know that it’s all going to get eaten that day, it’s all going to get eaten fresh \u2013 that’s my favorite kind of bread to make.\u201d<\/p>\n The skills learned from breadmaking, she says, go far beyond forming loaves. Much like farming, breadmaking has taught her to be \u201cinfinitely attentive\u201d to what she\u2019s doing and the world around her.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was baking professionally, and also now as I’ve been doing it at home, it’s interactive in a way that it seems many things aren’t in our current culture, in that you have to pay a lot of attention to the dough,\u201d says Larkin-Wells. \u201cThis sounds so silly, but you can learn to observe it and sense it in different ways \u2013 to smell it and watch it over time, and know what has happened to it, and how it will behave in the future, and what you should do with it. At first you don’t even know. But then you learn that the way that looks is over proofed. The way it’s flattened out like that, or the way that the edges are curved up at the bottom \u2013 that means it was under proofed and didn’t get a chance to open, or it didn’t get enough steam.\u201d<\/p>\n She continues, \u201cFarming is the same way, where you can be infinitely attentive to the plants and the soil and the weather, and the more experience you have, the more information you’re able to receive from your environment. I think that’s just the natural way of being for humans \u2013 to be really attentive to your environment \u2013 and it\u2019s hard when you don\u2019t know that much, but the more you learn, the more enjoyable it becomes.\u201d<\/p>\n Recently, Larkin-Wells has returned to Spring Valley Student Farm, this time serving as its interim farm manager, an opportunity she calls \u201ca dream.\u201d But on the weekends, she\u2019s baking at the pizza shop, prepping the oven on Saturday nights \u2013 often making whole wheat pita bread first, while the oven is still at its peak temperature.<\/p>\n \u201cPita is something that you can’t even make in a home oven, really,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause it doesn’t get hot enough.\u201d<\/p>\n And then on Sundays, a gathering of people in the know \u2013 friends, family, customers of the pizza shop, and others who have learned about the bread along the way \u2013 come to the shop to purchase the 40 or so just-baked loaves while the bread is fresh and soft and warm. The proceeds help to cover costs and keep the weekend breadmaking going.<\/p>\n Without Sustainable Community Food Systems, Larkin-Wells says she would not have been able to make time to study bread and acquire her skill, and that the push to dive deeply into something is an important part of the program.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the academic and the practical to be united in that way, and for both to be valued in the school setting, is just really wonderful,\u201d she says. \u201cThis is something where, if you have the bandwidth to be really curious about something, and to adapt your plans to what you’re learning and what your questions are, then it’s a fantastic opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Educator<\/strong><\/p>\n This coming February, Chloe Murphy \u201921 (CLAS) will travel to Brazil on an English teaching assistantship through the prestigious Fulbright Student Award Program<\/a>.<\/p>\n She plans to attend graduate school when she returns, with the goal of first becoming a history teacher in an urban setting, and later an education administrator.<\/p>\n But Murphy, who majored in Africana Studies, was already an educator long before beginning her studies at UConn.<\/p>\n \u201cI’ve been working with F.R.E.S.H. New London<\/a>, which is a food justice organization, for eight years,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n F.R.E.S.H. New London is a nonprofit organization devoted to \u201cempowering youth, connecting community, and growing food to dismantle systemic oppression and build food sovereignty\u201d in the southeastern Connecticut city. F.R.E.S.H. establishes and maintains community gardens and \u201csnack beds\u201d \u2013 where people can find fresh-growing vegetables available to them in spots around the city \u2013 and hosts year-round programming and conducts workshops on topics including agribusiness, capitalism, and food justice.<\/p>\n For a large amount of her time with F.R.E.S.H., Murphy has served as the nonprofit\u2019s food justice educator, teaching community members about agriculture, food systems, and food access. She\u2019s recently also taken on the role of the organization\u2019s director of youth programming \u2013 managing agricultural and food justice programs for mostly high school students from the ages of 14 to 18 in New London.<\/p>\n For Murphy, the Sustainable Community Food Systems minor at UConn offered an opportunity to continue her work with urban agriculture and community empowerment while experiencing how other organizations and cities are tackling the same issues.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat interested me was the hands-on component of it, the really personalized education where you could make a lot of decisions for yourself about how you were going to engage with the content,\u201d she says. \u201cBut also, this is my area of work, and most of my education in this field has come through my work back home. So, there’s still an opportunity to learn from different perspectives and from different resources. And if it’s something I care about, why not dive deeper into it?\u201d<\/p>\n For her internship, Murphy worked with the Keney Park Sustainability Project<\/a> in Hartford, assisting there with agricultural and programmatic work.<\/p>\n \u201cI always love visiting different urban agriculture initiatives and just seeing how they do things differently from us or if they do things similarly from us,\u201d she says. \u201cJust being in the space and taking it in and spending time there and building connections with folks was the best part.\u201d<\/p>\n She says the experience gave her different perspectives to pull from when writing her own programming. It\u2019s important work, she says, because of the impact that it can have, particularly in communities that have historically been marginalized.<\/p>\n \u201cThere’s no way to talk about food injustice without also talking about environmental racism, labor exploitation, the wealth gap, and the history of housing and housing access in the United States,\u201d says Murphy, who learned about the concept of “food apartheid” from the author, educator, and food justice activist Leah Penniman of Soul Fire Farm<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe term is \u2018food apartheid,\u2019 rather than a \u2018food desert,\u2019 because a desert is a naturally occurring landscape,\u201d she says. \u201cBut if we use the term \u2018apartheid,\u2019 we understand that this is really a political design. It just doesn’t naturally happen that low-income, people of color, Black, and Indigenous people are experiencing food apartheid at higher rates than any other groups. It’s by design because of all these other interlocking systems that have disadvantaged our communities for generations.\u201d<\/p>\n She explains that just because neighborhoods have grocery stores does not mean that people living in those communities have access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food, because barriers \u2013 including logistical, transportation, financial, and health barriers \u2013 can prevent access.<\/p>\n \u201cI know a woman whose child has lead poisoning, and he can’t eat anything but organic fruits and vegetables, which we know tend to be very expensive at grocery stores,\u201d Murphy says. \u201cSo that’s how she got into the food justice movement, because she\u2019s like, \u2018I need to be able to just grow my own food for my son, because I can’t pay for it at the grocery story sustainably.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n She says the answer to food apartheid is food justice, which encourages community empowerment, community engagement, and the ability of families to make decisions about the food that they will eat.<\/p>\n \u201cThis work is important because people are important, our communities are important,\u201d Murphy says, \u201cand they deserve to eat healthy. They deserve to make decisions about how they\u2019re going to live. We shouldn’t just be at the mercy of big systems that disenfranchise our communities. We should be empowered to make decisions about our lifestyles and about what our communities are going to look like.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Farmer <\/strong><\/p>\n Lauren Haff might someday become a vocational agriculture teacher.<\/p>\n Or, she might end up spending her winters farming in Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n But today, you\u2019ll likely find her in Mansfield in the early morning hours, working a quarter-acre of land right on Route 32 that hasn\u2019t been farmed in decades, growing vegetables \u2013 something she\u2019s never done before.<\/p>\n \u201cI am an heirloom cut flower grower,\u201d Haff says. \u201cI only do heirlooms. That\u2019s my thing, antique flowers. But caring so much about food, I wanted to get local food to local people.\u201d<\/p>\n Intermixed with the snapdragons and zinnias and sunflowers and dahlias are rows of melons and kale, tomatoes, cucumbers, hot peppers, and other vegetables, which Haff tends on her own and waters by hand in the shadow of the historic Merrow barn<\/a> \u2013 there\u2019s no irrigation or infrastructure to support the effort, and the work is hard.<\/p>\n But the mother of two adult daughters is toiling on this small parcel with the hope of achieving some very big goals.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to get healthy, nutritious food to local people,\u201d says Haff, who notes that she\u2019s been in the farming community off and on for 25 years. Her business is a social enterprise, she says \u2013 a successful business that also works for social good \u2013 and she\u2019s focusing her effort in one rural community in particular that isn\u2019t always recognized as being in need of access to local food.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was\u00a0married\u00a0I lived in Stafford,\u201d says Haff. \u201cBoth my daughters graduated from Stafford High.\u00a0It holds a place close to my heart. I’ve been working with the town of Stafford, and I want to get local produce or products from local farmers to Stafford.\u201d<\/p>\n Haff says that the elderly, homebound, and other adults and families without sufficient transportation options often struggle to find good food options in the community. There\u2019s no public transit, few markets, and the local co-op closed down.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a project she began working on while taking part in the Sustainable Community Food Systems minor, and it\u2019s now a part of her company, Vintage Blooms. But the minor offers much more than just the tools to become a farmer, she says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not only about this,\u201d she says, gesturing to the rows of crops in her field. \u201cIt can be about policy, sociology, nutrition. To me, it was getting local food\u00a0to\u00a0local people, and it teaches you about sustainable local food in all aspects. Whether you’re doing social justice work, whether you’re doing the environmental part of it, it helps you narrow down where you want to work in sustainable community food.\u201d<\/p>\n Haff does gardening and landscaping jobs through her company to support herself and her farm work, and starts all of her plantings on campus through an arrangement with the UConn greenhouses. She\u2019s just been awarded a $25,000 grant from the USDA, which she plans to use to construct a hoop house and add an irrigation system to her farm space.<\/p>\n A geography major who is still working on completing her degree following lengthy illness in her senior year, Haff is full of ideas \u2013 she\u2019d like to find a 1950\u2019s Chevy to move her produce, or rent a space in downtown Stafford where local residents could come to get fresh food. She\u2019s also planning for a farm stand on her Merrow Road plot to help fund the operation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Future Lawyer<\/strong><\/p>\n Taryn Crossley \u201924 (CANHR) didn\u2019t grow up farming \u2013 she had never spent her days growing food, managing plants, or dealing with the endless persistence of weeds.<\/p>\n \u201cThe weeding never stops, does it?\u201d the environmental studies major asks.<\/p>\n But Crossley, who began her sophomore year this fall, wants to be an environmental lawyer and has a strong interest in food regulation. When she saw a flyer in her residence hall for an informational Zoom session about the Sustainable Community Food Systems program, Crossley jumped at the chance. After that Zoom, she was sold.<\/p>\n \u201cI liked that there was an internship that was one of the programs requirements,\u201d she says, \u201cand I liked how it was working on a farm, because I hadn’t done that before and it seemed interesting to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Crossley set up her internship this past summer at Ox Hollow Farm in Roxbury<\/a>, which is close to her home in Bridgewater. She started working at the farm after the spring semester, as soon as she had completed her finals, and while she originally had planned to only work there a few days a week, the arrangement soon evolved into a Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. gig.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just became apparent to me that they needed help \u2013 they needed people to be there at the farm and to be doing work,\u201d she says. \u201cIt kind of just took on a role of itself, and it was a big commitment, but it was really good work, and if you have good coworkers, it makes it worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n Crossley spent her days at the farm planting, transplanting, and harvesting, marveling at the speed at which plants would grow and start to become productive, but also the commitment needed to endure the constant challenges that farming presents.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I walked away from the internship, I just kept thinking that my bosses must really love this, because it’s really hard work and it takes a lot of patience,\u201d she says. \u201cThis past season, it was really hard, because there was so much rain. Everything was just really moist, and things rotted a whole lot faster than they were supposed to. So, it was really tough this past season, but they’re all gas, no brakes.\u201d<\/p>\n She also helped the farm by working at farmers markets in Fairfield County on Wednesdays, and the experience of attending the markets was as eye-opening for her.<\/p>\n \u201cOur clientele was basically just one class \u2013 not everyone has access to these foods,\u201d she says. \u201cFarming is hard work, and it’s expensive. You usually have many workers working long hours, so the owners of a farm usually have a lot of financial strain, and then with the weather, there are some crops that get that get ruined, and so you pay the premium price for fresh local food. And it’s unfortunate that not everyone has the funds to be able to purchase those types of foods.\u201d<\/p>\n That critique of the food system is a lesson she\u2019s taken with her since completing her internship, and while the experience has further fueled her desire to work in food regulation, don\u2019t expect to find her working fields in the future.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think I could be a farmer \u2013 it\u2019s really hard, and it\u2019s soul-nourishing, I will say, but just not for me,\u201d Crossley says. \u201cGrowing up, I was very privileged in that food would show up on my plate, and I didn\u2019t really understand where that food came from, or the hard work that it takes to keep a farm. There\u2019s so many different elements that go into it that I had never even thought of, and now that I\u2019m aware of it, it makes me think more consciously about where I\u2019m buying from and the food that I am eating.\u201d<\/p>\n Sustainable Community Food Systems is about more than just farming, though, which explains why its interdisciplinary approach appeals to an aspiring lawyer like Crossley.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mom is a teacher, and it\u2019s so important for people in the education system that, at some point, they are teachers,\u201d she says. \u201cI think it’s the same thing with making food regulation, and if you’re in any way involved in the food system in a legal manner, you should have experience on a farm, in all the elements of a farm.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For more information about Sustainable Community Food Systems at UConn, visit scfs.environment.uconn.edu<\/a><\/em>. For more information about Service Learning initiatives and opportunities at UConn, visit <\/em>sl.engagement.uconn.edu<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Where ‘learning by doing’ means baking bread, growing vegetables, and working for justice <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":177092,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,2224,1866,2226,1715,2304,2192,2199,156,2235,2198,2225,2306,2227,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2168],"class_list":["post-176975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-cahnr","category-engr","category-clas","category-community-impact","category-extension","category-fairfield-county","category-new-london-county","category-profile","category-today-homepage","category-tolland-county","category-uconn-storrs","category-uconn-voices","category-uconn-edu-homepage","category-university-life"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 11:29:56","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176975"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178710,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176975\/revisions\/178710"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/177092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176975"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=176975"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=176975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/LarkinWells_210816a022-1-300x200.jpg\")
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